Is Bourdain Stalked by a Tattooed Freak?

By Karen

On April 24, Cats Working reader Adele (human, not feline) met Anthony Bourdain after his appearance in Chicago. She promises to tell us all about it, but in the meantime, last week wrapped Season 6 of No Reservations and proved extremely full.

April 19 was the Bourdains’ wedding anniversary. Tonic.com reported on the April 20 Can-Do Awards Dinner to benefit the NYC Food Bank they attended. Emeril Lagasse was the special honoree and the event raised $1.4 million for hunger relief.

On April 21, Tony visited Borders’ HQ in Ann Arbor, Michigan, talking to Merchandising about his upcoming book, Medium Raw. Makes me wonder if there’s extensive book tour in the works.

In advance of his April 23 appearance in Minneapolis, Pioneer Press got an advance phone interview.

Star Tribune also talked to Bourdain in an interview titled, “Bad boy and mellow fellow.” Seems Tony has changed his mind about his last meal.

City Pages provides a run-down on what Bourdain discussed in Minneapolis, and mentioned the heavily-tattooed possible stalker who joined him on stage and dropped his pants.

Chicago Tribune got an excellent interview with Bourdain before his appearance there April 24. Tony admits he’s “burnt out” on 20-course menus and intriguingly mentions his future Vietnam book as just a “hope.”

Personally, I’d advise him to go sooner rather than later for Ariane’s sake. My parents uprooted me at ages 10, 14, 15, and 17 and it was rough. Let Ariane help Dad satisfy his yen for Southeast Asia by middle school so she can find friendships that will last through high school and beyond. Losing that opportunity can be a real bitch later in life.

Saint Tigerlily loves Bourdain, but Les Halles Cookbook, not so much. She made his coq au vin and meticulously details what went wrong.

And while we’re ripping Bourdain a new one, NY Restaurant Examiner Howard Portnoy takes serious issue with Tony’s very existence and his views on food bloggers.

The Little Things invokes Bourdain in discussing the new Scripps Cooking Channel, set to debut May 31. The Stir has just the opposite opinion.

Tony’s take on the new network was mostly positive, as reported in the Washington Examiner: “What’s worse, another network about food, or another network filled with steroid-jacked reality freakazoids?”

Eater.com again collected Tony’s best one-liners from the Food Porn 2 finale.

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13 Responses to Is Bourdain Stalked by a Tattooed Freak?

Yep, the last meal is probably changed to uni with lightly melted lardo. Here’s the stalker story lest it get lost in the rest of what I’m writing. During the question portion of Saturday’s show, someone yelled, “What about the stalker?” Tony answered that there was this guy, who jumped on stage at a California show, a few months ago. Standing in front of Tony, he dropped trou, revealing a tattoo of Boudain’s face on one thigh and Eric Ripert’s face on the other. Somewhere on his body (I can’t recall where)is also a tattoo of Iron Chef Morimoto’s face. He asked Tony to please autograph the tattoo, so he could have the autograph tattooed above the face. Tony said he felt compelled to comply.Subsequently, he showed up at Le Bernardin, asking Eric Ripert to do the same, and then the other night, either in Michigan or Minnesota, he showed up, jumped up on stage; this time, faced the audience, dropped trou, and having on no underwear, revealed all to the audience he had to reveal. Tony said that he’s now a little worried about the guy.

Adele, I don’t think his last meal is uni, unless that’s a species of sea urchin.

From what you’re saying, sounds like it’s the same guy, and he’s turned up in CA, NYC, and Minneapolis. I don’t know what the laws are anywhere else, but his little strip routine would get him arrested in Virginia, and I’m sure his cellmate Bubba would like nothing better than to have him model all his tats.

I think uni is sea urchin roe — I’ll check. Ann Arbor, being a college town, is pretty liberal, which is probably why Tattoo Man got away with his performance. Tony did say that Ripert’s face was disturbingly close to the family jewels — actually that’s not the way he put it, but this is a family blog.

Sea urchin is one of his faves but a changeup from Roasted Marrow bones.

Ok Adele are you stringing us out? How did you get through the crowd? Was Cats Working a factor? (bet it was).

Tattoo man is f’d up, there are ALL kinds of stalkers out there… Imagine a grown man being so obsessed with Bourdain that he is compelled to intrude and try to make contact multiple times..wayyyy creepy!

Bob, good sleuthing. I somehow understood that the tattoos were on different thighs — probably because I couldn’t understand the need to go full frontal, if only one thigh was involved; he could have just cut the leg out of a pair of jeans. But perhaps the full frontal had to do with something other than artistic expression. Creepy is all I have to say.

Morgan, I’m not deliberatly trying to string you along. My hopes of finishing my little piece on Sunday were dashed because I was so wound up, I stayed up until 5am, slept a good part of Sunday, then went out to dinner and had enough wine that I was not at my most alert.

I will say this; there weren’t all that many people at the VIP reception, and Tony was pretty easy to get to. When I got up to him, to give him the little book for Ariane, I told him my name, and he said, “Oh, you’re Adele, from Cats Working.” My friend, Linda and I could have mingled through the entire reception, but we had to sit down with some wine in order to drum up the courage to go back up to him. As you probably know, photos do not do Mr. Bourdain justice, and he could not have been more cordial.

I’ve been out of my office doing an editing/proofreading seminar for a client all day today, so I didn’t get a chance to visit Cats Working and get Adele’s account posted, but it’s high on my list for tomorrow. She got some good scoop.

Adele, after the DC Food Fight, Morgan and I were so rattled after being with the Bourdains up close and personal that we returned to the hotel bar and knocked back a few martinis to steady our nerves. After watching Tony on TV all these years, meeting him in person is pretty unsettling, but in a very GOOD way. He’s great. And Ottavia couldn’t be more friendly and gracious.

I literally started with a Highball (don’t you love that 50’s expression?) and experienced olive envy of Karen’s martini, which I quickly switched to ( and got head beaned during the process but we discussed that on an earlier post).

I was so nervved up at seeing Tony, Ottavia , Eric Jose Andres, Ted Allen, et al freaking UP CLOSE that cocktails were MANDATORY!

We eventually retired and after a Xanax or 2 I managed to fall asleep (at 3AM!). We had reservations to tour the capital the next day and guess who was late? (Hint- it was not Karen).

We were reverberating with the events of the evening, so Adele, I can dig your head. I mean how cool that this little blog got on his radar??

Indeed, Morgan. I was surprised how flummoxed I was to be in Bourdain’s presence and have my name be slightly familiar to him. I used to have a connection to get back stage after concerts, and I never felt tongue-tied in the presence of music stars (I even was introduced to Mick Jagger, not that I expect I made any impression). But there’s a big difference when someone is coming into your living room most weeks.

Morgan and Adele, I still have not gotten over my amazement at the reach this blog sometimes has. Getting noticed by the Bourdains was the first big shock, and then, of course, the BBC. And there have been other lesser incidents, like the time I got embroiled in the secrecy surrounding the filming of NR Philippines, and hope I was a tiny bit instrumental in getting Travel Channel to do a complete 180 on that policy.

But after 500+ posts, I’m just happy as hell that SOMEONE is reading it and I haven’t gotten any death threats (well, except for that wacko who hoped I die alone and the cats eat my eyeballs)!

So glad you got to meet him and had such a wonderful experience! Also wanted to say “thanks” for always posting the links to other stories. I’ve read pretty much everything I can find and it seems like the people who are the most anti-Tony base their opinions on one or two of his comments that they take out of context. This seems especially true for the vegetarians, Alice Waters fans and foodie bloggers. You’d think these people would be intelligent enough to know better – but there it is.

Imabear, thanks for the compliment on the links, especially since I was accused by another reader just yesterday of being “unoriginal” because I post links.

I think most people are savvy enough to appreciate the concept of Internet “research” and presenting findings. I provide first-hand scoop when I can, like Adele’s experiences in Chicago last weekend.

I agree with you that much of the nasty stuff I find written about Bourdain is a reaction to one little thing people have read, seen, or heard, and they don’t seem to know much else about him.

I do hope that the information I provide allows people who read Cats Working regularly to take the negative stuff with a grain of salt because they have much more accurate and complete information about Bourdain than the average casual fan.